Psalms 58:9

The general sense of the verse is clear, though the second line is extremely obscure and possibly corrupt. The first line certainly means, Before your pots can feel the thorns(possibly a proverbial expression), and the verb in the second line means, He shall sweep them(or, it) away with a whirlwind. It is another figure for the swift destruction of the wicked and their schemes, taken from the experience of travel in the desert. The travellers have lighted a fire of dry thorns or brambles under their cooking pots. It blazes up rapidly, but even so, before the pots are heated and the meat in them cooked, a sudden whirlwind sweeps away the fire and undoes their work. The fire represents the malicious will of the evildoers, the pots with the meat the plans which they are devising: but let them work never so rapidly, the whirlwind of divine judgement will annihilate their schemes.

The crux of the verse is in the words rendered in A.V. both living and inhis wrath. They have been supposed to refer to the thorns, the green and the burning alike:or to the flesh in the pot, the raw flesh and the sodden alike:or to the flesh and the fire, the raw flesh and hot embers alike:but all these interpretations break down on the fact that chârôn, though not a rare word, always means the burning wrath of God. It seems necessary either to omit the word k'mô, -as," before chârôn, or to read b'inô, -in," instead of it (במו for כמו). We may then render, Like raw flesh (perhaps, while the flesh is yet raw), shall Wrath sweep them away with a whirlwind; or, shall He sweep them away with a whirlwind in wrath. The pronoun for themis in the singular, and may mean each one of the wicked, or perhaps rather it, the whole scheme. For a figure from cooking cp. Hosea 7:4 ff.: for the thorn fires Isaiah 33:12; Ecclesiastes 7:6; and for the whirlwind of divine wrath see Psalms 50:3, "it shall be very tempestuous round about him"; Job 27:21.